States of Nature: The Social Contract from the 17th to the 21st Centuries

HNRS 2030 Sec. 3 - Fall 2016

Professor John Protevi Departments of Philosophy and French Studies

M W 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

218 French House

We will look at some classics in – or critical of – the social contract tradition in political thought: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Engels, Nietzsche, Rawls, Nozick, Pateman, and Mills. As the social contract claims that life in states is superior to life in non-state societies (that is, in the “state of nature”) we’ll also look at some anthropology of non-state life: Sahlins, Graeber, and Scott.